September's update is live! Let's take a look at what's new:
Cutlass Cove
The newest Standard course to recieve an overhaul is the Pirate course, now named Cutlass Cove:
"Tales of a great treasure buried in the sands of Cutlass Cove have lured many pirates to this lonely island. Will you be able to conquer 18 holes to find the lost riches?"
New features
There are a few big new features that I want to take the time to highlight:
Liven up your course with some ambient sound effects! You can now select ambient sounds to play on your course from the Environment window. Currently there are only a few to choose from, but more will be added with each new content update and course overhaul.
Individually Style your greens! You can now style individual pieces of the green through the Properties window or context menu. I also added a new Sand green style, which has little bounce and quickly slows down your ball.
Trigger events from Behavior Sequences! The new Trigger Event behavior was added so that you can now trigger events from your Behavior Sequences. This opens up a whole new realm of possibilities for making complex behaviors.
Coming Soon
October Update Next month's update will be the Halloween update, with all new Halloween content, a new 18-hole course, and several new power-ups (some of which I was hoping to get done for this update, but unfortunately I ran out of time). I think it's going to be a really fun update!
Changelog - 2019.9.0
Features
Ambient sound effects can now bed added to courses in the Environment window.
Added a few new objects to the Pirate content.
Reworked some parts of the Course Creator UI.
Green styles can now be set on individual green pieces.
Added new Sand green style.
Added camera collision so that camera mostly no longer clips into objects.
Added new behavior - Trigger Event, which allows you to trigger an event from a behavior sequence.
Added option to set Trigger Limit on events.
Added option to set Delay on events.
Events can now be triggered on round change in the hole events.
Added Start Looping and Stop Looping actions to events.
Event list items can now be minimized by clicking on the header
Added Absolute and Relative position modes to Path and Move to Position behaviors.
Box select is now based on the center of objects rather than their origin.
Operation being undone or redone is now shown as a toolip on the undo/redo buttons.
Improved loading so that the game does not completely freeze for an extended period of time when loading courses.
Added buttons to edit hole info and hole events to the bottom transform options bar.
Increased the pitch range of the game camera slightly.
Slightly improved look of green textures by adding a specular map.
Slightly modified shot power curve.
Bug Fixes
Fixed dragging a window sometimes moving selected objects
Fixed balls sometimes being set as out of bounds when coming out of a pipe exit that is out of bounds.
Fixed trees not behaving correctly when using random rotation and random scale.
Water no longer blocks object selection.
Fixed Wrapped Move to Rotation not working correctly.
Power-Ups are no longer enabled on holes not being played.
Fixed pipe exit speed sometimes being inconsistent.
Fixed color picker not updating the color graphic correctly when opening.
- Kevin
MiniGolf Maker August Update
Hi everyone!
The August monthly update is here, and I've got a lot of stuff to share!
Desert Adventure
Desert-themed content is now available in the Course Creator! This includes new objects: Old desert town building sets, ruins, palm trees, and rocks, as well as new music, terrain grounds, skies, and wall styles.
To showcase the Desert content I have made a full 18-hole course, Desert Adventure, which comes standard with the game. You can check out a preview of the course on our YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/9DVeWe_Adhs
Coming Soon
Standard Course Overhaul It's undeniable that the courses that come standard with MiniGolf Maker have been very underwhelming. With only 2 or 3 holes each, I have seen many complaints about the lack of holes available out-of-the-box to play.
So, I have decided that starting now, every update (unless the update has new content with a new course) I will be overhauling one of the existing standard courses (Pirate, Medieval, Winter, Polyworld, and Dreamscape).
September Update Finally, before we get to the change log, here's what I have planned for the September update:
Behaviors and Events Phase 3 - Mainly improvements to the Events portion of the system.
Course Atmosphere - Such as the ability to add ambient sound effects to your course.
Green Materials - Ability to change the material of greens to materials such as Sand.
New Power-Ups - These are a secret...
Changelog - 2019.8.0
Features
Added Desert content, including new objects, music, wall styles, and terrain grounds
Added 5 new skies
Improved look of existing terrain grounds
Behaviors can now be nested (i.e. Objects in groups that have behaviors can now also have behaviors)
New Behavior - Visibility
New Behavior - Move to Position
New Behavior - Move to Rotation
New Behavior - Freeze Rotation
Added Smooth option and movement direction indicators to the Path behavior
Added icons that show objects with behaviors
Increased selected hole limit from 9 to 18
Course banner image selection now uses an in-game file browser
Bug Fixes
Fixed stroke counter breaking with 3-digit scores
Fixed walls not extending all the way down on uneven terrain
Fixed flag being groupable
Fixed issues when the flag green piece is added to a group
Fixed various issues with the Keep Straight setting on edges
Fixed various issues with the Snap to Surface setting
Fixed some inside wall textures being incorrect during play
Fixed pipe link properties not loading correctly
Fixed "Built-In" (now "Standard") courses showing as "Workshop" in Whole Course selection
Fixed group object not being selectable when hidden behind other objects
- Kevin
MiniGolf Maker Hotfix - July 1st, 2019
Hi everyone,
Just posting a quick announcement for a hotfix that addresses a major issue with loading some Workshop courses.
Changelog - 2019.7.1
Fixed a bug that was causing errors when attempting to load courses saved with version 2019.5.1.
- Kevin
MiniGolf Maker June/July Update and Summer Sale
Hi everyone,
It has been a while since the last update, but I am back with the June/July update, as well as a 25% discount as part of the Steam Summer Sale!
Behaviors, Events and Grouping
The star of this update is Phase 1 of the Behaviors and Events system, which allows you to add dynamic elements to your courses.
Phase 1 is somewhat limited in its content, but it lays the foundation for the system which I will be building on top of in future updates.
Check out the Behaviors and Events tutorial to get a jump start:
https://youtu.be/eIzlsUxiIHY
Also in this update is the ability to Group objects together, which can be very powerful when used with behaviors.
Check out the Grouping tutorial to get familiar with it:
https://youtu.be/l5SEr8OPUSU
If you have any feedback or ideas about Behaviors, Events, or Grouping, be sure to tell me about it in the Ideas and Feedback forum!
Update Schedule
I touched on this briefly in the previous news post, but updates will now be done on a monthly basis, being released on the first Friday of every month. This should give me enough time to do substantially more work on MiniGolf Maker.
Coming Up
Finally, here's a preview of some of the stuff I have planned for upcoming updates:
More Behaviors - Such as Visibility Toggle, Move to Position, and Move to Rotation.
Nested Behaviors - The ability to have multiple parent and child objects with behaviors attached.
More Event Types - ABility to trigger events on turn change, round change, object collision, and other Event imrpovements.
Desert Content - A new content set for the Course Creator with Middle Eastern desert objects, music, and styles.
Course Ambience - The ability to add ambient sound effects to your course.
Green Materials - Ability to change greens into different materials such as Sand for sand traps.
Mac (and possibly Linux) Support - I finally have access to some Mac's that I can test this out with.
Changelog - 2019.7.0
Features
Implemented Behaviors and Events system.
Implemented Grouping system.
Objects can now have their names changed via the Properties window.
Context Menu has been rewritten to improve usability.
Handle objects have been improved show show as semi-transparent through other objects.
Increased Course Creator camera maximum zoom distance.
Properties window now only shows properties for the most recently selected object.
Added item to context menu to show Properties window.
Log files are now saved in My Documents\My Games\MiniGolf Maker\Logs.
Bug Fixes
Fixed hole completion visual effects showing on all holes instead of just the active one.
Fixed some unexpected rotation behavior when rotating objects that are off-grid.
MiniGolf Maker Check-In - June 8th, 2019
Hi everyone,
It's been a while since the last announcement, so I wanted to check in with you all and give an update on how development is going.
Behaviors and Events
As I said in the last announcement, I was going to dedicate my time towards creating the behaviors and events system. Well, I have done just that and would like to show off what I've been up to. Unfortunately I cannot show the behaviors in action at the moment, but I can show some of the new UI for editing behaviors and events.
Behaviors Most objects can have sequences and behaviors added to them:
As of now there are only 3 behaviors: Pause, Rotate, and Path, but I will definitely be adding more!
Events You can set up events to trigger sequences on objects. You can either place trigger objects on the course that will be triggered when a ball rolls though them:
Or you can set up event triggers for when the hole is started and finished:
Grouping A cool new feature is that you can group objects together. These groups can also have behaviors applied to them:
The Next Update & Future Plans
I am hoping to have this next update ready by the end of June. Assuming that works out I also have some extra plans that may or may not involve a certain upcoming event on Steam...
For future updates, I am thinking that I would like to start doing monthly updates rather than weekly. I have struggled in the past to make the weekly updates worthwhile so I want to start focusing on quality over quantity.
I will see you again at the end of June!
- Kevin
MiniGolf Maker Hotfix - May 11th, 2019
Hi everyone,
Just posting a quick announcement for a hotfix update for MiniGolf Maker. This is mainly to address a bug that was causing online multiplayer to not work correctly.
Changelog - 2019.5.1
Bug Fixes
Fixed bug that was causing online multiplayer to not work correctly.
Fixed closing chat also opening the pause menu.
Fixed "simple" scale not working.
Fixed input icons not being hidden in some cases when they should be.
- Kevin
MiniGolf Maker Update - April 28th, 2019
Hi everyone,
Sorry for the delay in the update! Some of the new features took a little longer than expected to complete. (Also, I had to go see Avengers Endgame).
Coming Soon
I have been teasing the Behaviors, Sequences, and Events system for a while, but now I really want to get a basic version of it released.
So, I have decided that I will focus all of my efforts in this and temporarily discontinue the regular Friday updates until this feature is completed. I am not sure how long it will take, but I will make sure to post updates if it starts to take a long time.
Changelog - 2019.4.4
Changed how controls are saved - Unfortunately this means that your current control bindings will be reset. This had to be done because of some severe problems I discovered with the old way of saving the controls.
Course Creator controls are now rebindable.
Mouse movement can now be inverted.
Input prompts and icons now change based on if you are using a mouse & keyboard or a controller (currently will only show icons for Xbox controllers).
-Kevin
MiniGolf Maker Update - April 19th, 2019
Hi everyone,
Another update coming at ya!
Coming Soon
Weekly Update Focus Starting this upcoming week, I would like to have a more specific focus for each weekly update. For example, focus a whole update on several new power-ups, or an update focused around improving a particular part of the game.
Next week's update will be focused on control improvements. This includes:
Rebindable Course Creator controls (keyboard and mouse only).
Ability to invert mouse camera movement,
Change input prompts in the UI based on whether you are using a keyoboard + mouse or controller.
Possibly add controller support for managing shared controllers, however this is somewhat dependent on the UI rewrite, detailed below.
UI Behind-the-Scenes Rewrite Something I have started working on recently is a complete rewrite of our UI system. I decided to do this because, with the UI for the shared controllers in particular, I was seeing some major limitations of the current UI system that was making it difficult to work with. As a player, once the rewrite is complete you won't see much difference aside from some minor visual improvements, but it will bring many behind-the-scenes improvements to the UI.
Changelog - 2019.4.3
Features
(Work in Progress) You can now add multiple players to the mouse and keyboard and player one's controller
Currently this can only be done via the mouse, I will improve the UI and add controller support for this in a future update.
Click the "Add Shared Controller" button in the lobby to add a player.
Click on a player in the lobby to remove them (local players only).
Black Hole no longer effects balls with the Weight power-up enabled.
Moved the lobby chat window to the right side of the screen to be more consistent with the game chat.
Bug Fixes
Fixed pipes not working correctly if the Exit Delay is 0.
Fixed ball not being hidden in pipe while waiting to exit.
Fixed course music not being correct if no music was selected for the course.
-Kevin
MiniGolf Maker - April 12th, 2019
Hi everyone,
Just wanted to post a quick announcement that I am sadly going to be skipping the update this week, as there isn't anything ready to deliver.
With most of the effort concentrated on the Behaviors system (as well as some other potential behind-the-scenes improvements), there hasn't been much time to be able to dedicate to smaller features and bug fixes. There have also been other life things going on that have limited the amount of time I can work on MiniGolf Maker.
Hopefully I can pick up the pace soon and get these updates back to having more content.
- Kevin
MiniGolf Maker Update - April 5th, 2019
Hi everyone,
This week's update is very small, as things have been busy this week, not leaving a lot of time for MiniGolf Maker development.
Coming Soon
Behaviors System The behaviors system is still in development. It is probably the most complex subsystem of the Course Creator, so it will take some time before it is fully implemented. We hope to have some presentable updates on this next week.
Multiple Players per Controller Also currently in development is the ability to add multiple players to a single controller or the mouse and keyboard. We plan on having this added in next week's update.
Changelog - 2019.4.1
The current version of MiniGolf Maker is 2019.4.1.
Features
Added new Black Hole power-up.
Changed "Toggle Ready" text in lobby to "Ready Up"
